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March 24, 2016

(+++) GETTING INTO TROUBLE

Trouble Boys: The True Story of
the Replacements. By Bob Mehr. Da Capo. $27.95.

There are lessons to be
learned from the persistent belief that pop music has deep meaning and that, as
a result, there is something special about angst-ridden, drugged or
alcohol-saturated groups of young people who come together, fight, make up, fight
again, become fast friends, become bitter enemies, make money, blow it all, and
so on and on – and on and on. Anyone interested in such lessons will not find
them in Trouble Boys. Bob Mehr, a
music critic and columnist, is not concerned with the Replacements as an
entirely typical, genre-bound group whose foibles mirror those of dozens, if
not hundreds, of other would-be rock stars. His interest is in showing that the
band was important, that it was significant, that its story has meaning. Yawn.Well, not “yawn” for those who buy into
pop-life hagiography and standard rise-and-fall storytelling, but given the
fact that the Replacements were scarcely an “A list” group, it is hard to
escape the notion that the audience for Trouble
Boys is very severely limited, no matter how well the book is written.

It is written well, and researched well, too. But it all leads to such
a boringly predictable conclusion, which – for potential readers who cannot
stand all the suspense – goes as follows: “In the end, the pain and
desperation, the chaos and the noise, it had meant something. ‘However finite
and small,’ observed Tommy Stinson, ‘we left a mark.’ ‘We did leave a mark,’
said Paul Westerberg. ‘And no one can take that away. We were a great little
band.’” Well, “little” is the operative word here, and the formulaic banality
of Mehr’s lines about “the pain and desperation, the chaos and the noise” is
reflected through all of the book’s nearly 500 pages. That includes the
obligatory photo spread, with captions such as “Bob, age 7, at the start of his
troubles”; “Paul Westerberg’s 1975 yearbook photo from the Academy of Holy
Angels”; and “Paul’s high school friend and mentor John Zika, who would commit
suicide in 1977.”

Trouble Boys is factual, but its story arc is as predictable as
that of a Tolkien-inspired heroic fantasy. There are the “touring” tales:
“Between their first national outing in the spring of ’83 and the end of the Let It Be tour two years later, the
Replacements would play some 200-plus shows in forty states, crisscrossing the
country half a dozen times.” These come with cute little revelatory snippets:
the band’s name for its “beat-up Ford Econoline” was “Otis, after the drunk on The Andy Griffith Show.” Then there are
the “verge of success” elements, as when “the Replacements were included in Rolling Stone’s first annual ‘Hot
Issue.’ Alongside 1986’s other rising talents (actress Laura Dern, director
James Cameron, boxer Mike Tyson), the ’Mats were named the year’s ‘Hot Band’…” And
there are the life-is-tough observations: “The Replacements might have been
recording at a $10,000-a-week studio, but after seven years, they were still
scraping by.” Also, there are the usual problems associated with replacing a
departed band member, handled in the usual quirky manner: “No, a full-fledged
band member needed to be able to get the Replacements’ sense of humor and
tolerate their drinking. And he had to be from Minneapolis. Naturally, they
began looking in their local tavern.”

So Trouble Boys progresses through its suitable-for-parody story,
which Mehr insists be taken extremely seriously. Actually, potential readers
might consider watching This Is Spinal
Tap and deciding whether they would like to peruse an exhaustive rock-band
story that is as serious as the 1984 movie is comical. Things here are very
serious indeed – one book chapter even begins, “With most of the Replacements’
new material having been written during the physical and spiritual hangover
following the Pleased to Meet Me
tour, the songs were downbeat, if not downright defeated. ‘Anger is not on the
top of my list anymore,’ Westerberg admitted at the time. ‘It’s been replaced
by despair.’”

Most of the troubles
enumerated and explored at length in Trouble
Boys are ones of the Replacements’ own making; the rest are endemic to the
industry in which they operated. And it is
an industry, not some deeply meaningful and emotionally significant artistic expression
of the intensity of human connection. As they are presented in this book, the
band’s small successes and larger failures, however significant they may be to
Mehr, to whatever fans still remember this particular band, and to the band
members themselves, have nothing existential to tell anyone. Mehr’s insistence
on the uniqueness of a group that, objectively speaking, was not the slightest
bit out of the ordinary in its particular field, prevents the author from
seeking grand lessons from the Replacements’ modest ascension and precipitous
descent – much less finding any. Paradoxically, the more specific detail Mehr
provides about the ins and outs of the band’s existence – and there is a
plethora of detail here – the more Trouble
Boys seems like an oft-told tale rather than a one-of-a-kind story. This is
a (++) book in terms of its content, raised to (+++) level only because of the
quality of its research and, in the main, of its writing. One chapter ends with
a reference to the band finding “solace with a kindred spirit, a fellow
traveler down the road of life.” That cliché scarcely shows Mehr’s best style,
but it is indicative of how the author apparently sees himself. This book is
for others who also deem themselves “fellow traveler[s] down the road of life,”
and who think their journey more meaningful to the extent that it includes the
trials and tribulations of the Replacements.